Soul Mates
by PeaceOut.-Alex
Summary: "As if she'd always been meant to save him from himself, instead of punishing him for being someone else." - A series on one-shots centered around Steroline throughout the seasons. The rating may change depending on update content; nothing above a T rating. I like to follow te: Please don't expect any kind of system or schedule for uploading, I go by inspiration, not days.


They've been here before. He remembers specifically a few times in the mid-1900s when she had first visited him after their chance meeting and her rather generous help with his little sibling problems. They'd sat on the couch in the house of some rather unwelcoming hosts. He'd stared at the wall, and she'd glared at him with her arms crossed over her chest, her boobs pushed up and nearly spilling out the top of her dress but he didn't notice. She was attractive, no doubt. And blondes had always been a weakness of his, but he wasn't interested in her that way. Didn't see her body as a temple but instead a prison, if he went to bed with her, she would never let him leave, would trap him beneath her silken sheets and ask him everything about himself that he never wanted to tell.

He'd killed another innocent woman, and then called her to clean up the mess. And this was about when she'd become fed up with doing things his way and taken matters into her own hands. She'd locked him away in the basement of the house, where he no longer had to stare at the blood stained walls and feel like a failure because he just couldn't keep his fangs to himself. She locked him there with chains laced in vervain and ropes spun together with little pieces of wood. Or, at least, that's what it felt like. He was sure they must have just been poorly woven and then laced with vervain, giving them a raged, burning effect like wood. Either way, it hurt a lot. But he trusted her…knew she only wanted what was best for him, was always willing to do what was best for him.

And then she held him there, kept him and starved him for days, only replacing his hunger with the sweet yet terribly unsatisfying blood of some small creature. And some part of him loved it, fed on the pain and the suffering and the hunger. The physical abuse, the way she broke him down and told him he needed to get a grip of his damned self, because he was a daft fool. No better than the night she'd met him. And she was right. He took no offense in her words, and laced no venom into his thanks when she had finally finished the job and saved him from himself years later.

Yes, they'd been in this position before. Only, all those times, it was a different blonde standing across from him. And as he stared at the wall, and she looked at him with concern etched into every fiber of her being, he couldn't help but feel that this was different in every way yet exactly the same. She locked him in chains made of her own understanding, tied him with ropes made not of wood or laced in vervain but laced together with her tender fingers from the pieces of her shedding heart, and then laced with her utter devotion. Yes, he'd taken another life. But she would not condemn him as Lexi had. And as grateful as he was to the original blonde best friend for all she'd done for him, he suddenly realized that the embrace of familiar and caring arms worked much faster than the confinement and solitude of being thrown into a room made of concrete and left there to starve until he couldn't take it any longer and begged for whatever animal she had ready for him.

When she clutched his head to her chest and absorbed the guilt that was written all over his face, the desperate need to go out and repeat the offense seemed to melt away like butter on the hot sidewalk. It would always linger, always leave some trace within him. But he would never have to worry about it posing a threat, at least…not with Caroline so willing to keep it at bay, and shine down on it like only the sun could. And it seemed so simple and natural, as if it should have always been this way. As if she'd always been meant to save him from himself, instead of punishing him for being someone else.


End file.
